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Being a teenager is not easy. Your body is changing. Your brain is changing. Sometimes you don’t even know yourself.

Adolescents experience changes in hormonal activity, which influences mood and behavior. Teens often experience mood swings, intense emotions, irritability, and conflict with authority figures. This can be confusing both to adolescents and those that share their world.

Younger siblings might lose the friendship that they once had with the adolescent. Parents may no longer be able to communicate with their teen. Teens experience a great deal of social conflict with their peers, while simultaneously experiencing a strong desire to bond with a group. Students today often feel terrific pressure to take harder classes, get better grades, and have more outside activities in order to compete for acceptance into the best colleges. These social and academic pressures might lead to issues such as depression, anxiety, anger, or eating disorders.

Adolescents often turn to potentially harmful behaviors to deal with their strong feelings that don’t know what to do with. They may experiment with drugs and/or alcohol, become overly-sexual, and put themselves in harm’s way with risky behaviors such as road racing. They may have trouble at school or with the law.

It is helpful for adolescents to be able to talk to a non-judgmental adult about their concerns and fears. In our therapy with adolescents, we meet them where they are—through their music, academics, wherever we can find an entrance into their internal worlds. If you are concerned about your teenager, or just want to give your child a place to talk through the concerns of the day, give us a call.